If you don't need digital I/O or S/PDIF and need a clean 20-bit soundcard for A/D, D/A purposes at a low prcie than this card does the job. I use it with Cubase VST and it works great. The ASIO drivers allow for a lower buffer and the card's full-duplex performance is it's strong point. In other words you can record and play at the same time. Definetly a leap ahead of other cards in the same price range. The 20-bit 128times oversampling sigma/delta converters will ensures that what goes in, comes out. The breakout box is good to have as it shields the connectors from noise and elimanates cross talk. You can arrange the jumpers on the card for either +4dB or -10dB operation. It's input impedance is 10k ohms minimum and has a frequency response of 20Hz-22Hz (+/- 0.5dB). Has a signal to noise ratio of 93dBs. This is a good card for starter. If you need more later you can always get another card to handle other purposes. Midiman seems to offer other well made digital audio products.